Happy Thanksgiving! 感謝祭おめでとう

"I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and new..."

Did you know the pilgrims made seven times more graves than huts, and still decided to set aside a day of thanksgiving for all of their blessings? What a humbling thought. We all have things to be thankful for, even if we forget it from time to time. Sometimes even the things we are quite the opposite of thankful for turn out to be blessings in the end, and that is a comforting thought (^_<)

This is my first Thanksgiving stateside in the past three years, but all of my Kansha-sai (Japanese for Thanksgiving) were spent in the company of good friends and delicious food. Last year we celebrated at Ena's famous Chez Howell over a dinner of lentils, Thai curry and guacamole. The previous Dia de Gracias was spent marveling at Kyoto's famous fall foilage and savoring spicy Indian cuisine in Gion. And who could forget the time we snuggled beneath a warm kotatsu, huddled around a steaming pot of kimchee nabe!

Yet even as I prepared to repatriate myself this past August, I found myself looking forward to the deliciousness that is good old pumpkin pie. Despite a series of unfortunate events that transpired to keep me from eating said pumpkin pie, or even having a traditional Thanksgiving dinner in my own home, it turned out to be the absolute best Thanksgiving in (my) recent history. No fighting. No stress. No obscure sea creatures sneaking into the hot pot. Just family, food and fun. Niiiiiiice.

Here's to hoping all of you had a happy Thanksgiving as well. What are you most thankful for this year? Kind of hard to say once you start thinking about it, isin't it? There's just too much to be thankful for!